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[Reprinted from THE AMKRH an HlSTORICAl REVIEW, Vol. XII., No. 3, April, I907.] 



SOME ENGLISH CONDITIONS SURROUNDING THE 
SETTLEMENT OF VIRGINIA 

To Americans the settlement of Jamestown presents itself as 
something unique, the birth of the nation, the first scene in the 
drama of American history. Looked at from the European side, 
however, it was but a single occurrence connected with a long line 
of preceding events and surrounded by a group of others with 
which it had mutual relations. Under the conditions existing in 
England at the beginning of the seventeenth century the establish- 
ment of the \ irginia colony was the natural next step to take, and its 
form reflected the group of influences active there. In these times 
of reminiscence it may be of interest to examine more closely some 
of the steps that led up to the formation of the Virginia Company 
and some of the contemporary circumstances under which the set- 
tlement was made. 

England came late into the colonizing movement. The example 
of two great colonial empires had long been before her. When 
the settlement of 1607 took place, more than a century had passed 
since the nearly contemporary voyages of Vasco da Gama in 1497 
and of Columbus in 141;-' had established the dominion of Portugal 
and of Spain respectively in the East and the West Indies. In the 
years immediately succeeding 1407 the Portuguese government, in 
a wonderful series of naval ami trading expeditions, extended its 
dominion along the coasts of the Indian Ocean far beyond what 
would have seemed inherent!) possible for so small a nation. A 
line of able commanders not only successfully fought Indian, Aral), 
ami Turkish fleets and the armies of pett) Indian rajahs and island 
chieftains, lint carried out a policj of seizing and holding the stra- 
tegical military and commercial ports that soon gave them virtual 
command of all the Eastern sca^. Bj [520 the east coast of Africa, 
the land at the outlet of the Persian Gulf, the west coast of India, 
the island of Ceylon. Java, and the Spice Islands were lined b) a 
scattered series of Portuguese fortified stations, and most of the 
princes of these regions had been forced to accept dependent al- 
liances with the king of Portugal. From Quiloa and Mombassa 
on the African coast, through Ormuz, Diu, Goa, and Calicut, to 
Malacca and the Sp ids, ii" vessel could trade without a 

( 5<>7 ) 



• C S3 



508 E. I'. Cheyney 

Portuguese pass, no coasl ruler could make a treaty antagonistic 

to Portugal, and all the must profitable commerce was in her hands. 
A Portuguese viceroy ruled at < loa, and two governors with stations 
at Mozambique in the west and Malacca in the east were given the 
oversight of the outlying parts of these 15,000 miles of coast do- 
minion. Every year a fleet averaging twenty sail passed around 
the Cape of Good Hope between Portugal and her eastern do- 
minions, its great galleons, caravels, and carracks loaded with the 
most valuable articles of commerce. Lisbon became a great com- 
mercial centre and Portugal enjoyed a period of unwonted intel- 
lectual, economic, and international prominence. Her king along 
with his other titles called himself " Lord of the Conquest, Navi- 
gation, and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India." 

The construction by Spain in the latest years of the fifteenth 
and the early years of the sixteenth century of a still more ex- 
tended, more powerful, and more profitable empire in the West 
is an even more impressive if also more familiar story. By some 
such date as 1540 the conqnistadores had explored and largely sub- 
jugated a great part of the island and continental regions of Amer- 
ica south of what is now the 1'nitcd States. This dominion had 
been organized under the systematic administration of the Council 
of the Indies and the Casa de Contratacion in Spain and of two 
viceroyalties with a number of subordinate governments in America. 
Certain municipal institutions had been established and constant 
communication took place with the home government. The vast 
geographical extent of the Spanish dominions in the Xew World, 
with a Spanish-born population of perhaps 150.000 and native-born 
of possibly 5,000,000; the productivity of the silver and gold-mines, 
unexampled before in human history; the size of the fleets carrying 
between Spain and the Indies emigrants, military and civil officials, 
troops, bullion, European and American goods, and all the inter- 
change of two parts of an advanced empire; the reaction of these 
things on the importance of the mother-country in Europe — all 
these, like the East-Indian empire of Portugal, had grown prac- 
tically to maturity by the middle of the sixteenth century, long 
before England had established her first colony. 

We know that the existence of these imposing political structures 
exercised a powerful influence on the thought of Englishmen, it 
was not merely that they hail a natural human interest in the newly- 
discovered lands, with their savage men, new animal and vegetable 
productions, and peculiarities ,1!' climate and physical conformation; 
nor was it merely that the mystery, the glamor, and the romance 
of the distant and the unknown touched poetic imaginations amongst 



Conditions surrounding Settlement of Virginia 509 

them; but it was true that many Englishmen of influence had a 
vivid realization that two nations of Europe, one far smaller, the 
other not inordinately larger than England, had obtained a great 
inheritance in the Mast and the West that England might have had, 
might even yet rival. The very first reference to the New World 
in English general literature is an expression of regret and vexa- 
tion on that account : 

O what thynge a had be than 
Yf that they that be englyshe men 
Myght have ben the furst of all 
That there shulde have take possessyon 
And made furst buyldynge and habytacion 
A memory perpetuall. 
And also what an honorable thynge 
Bothe to the realme and to the kynge 
To have had his domynyons extendynge 
There into so farre a grounde. 1 

An early historian makes one party in the council of Henry 
VIII., as early as 1511, say. "The Indies are discover'd, and vast 
treasure brought from thence every day. Let us therefore bend 
our endeavours thitherwards; and if the Spanish and Portuguese 
suffer us not to join with them, there will be yet region enough 
for all to enjoy."- The well-known memorial sent by Robert 
Thome, an English merchant resident in Seville, to Henry VIII. 
in 1527, after speaking of the islands and territories belonging to 
the kings of Spain and Portugal, declares that in some of the 
earlier English expeditions, "if the marriners would have been 
ruled, and folowed their pilot's mind the lands of the West Indies 
from whence all the gold commeth had beene ours ", and that even 
yet England might find lands under the equator no less rich in gold 
and spicery and no less profitable to her than theirs were to the 
kings of Spain and Portugal. 3 Richard Eden in the dedication of 
his Treatyse of the New India, published in 1553, again expresses 
regret that the faint-heartedness of the early English navigators 
prevented its coming to pass that the rich Peruvian treasury of tin- 
Spanish king at Seville was not in the Tower of London.' In his 
Decades of the New \\'<<rld. published two years later, he refrains, 
naturally enough, from such a pious wish, as his book is dedicated 

1 An Interlude of the Four Elements, written probably in 1519; printed in E. 
Arlier, First Three English Books on America, pp. xx-xxi. 

-Lord Herbert of Cherbury, History of Henry VIII., under the year 151 1. 

Mlakluyt, II. 17". 

* E. Arber. First Three English Books on America, p. 6. 



510 /:. / ; . Cheyney 

to Philip of Spain, now king also of England, but he does go so 
far as to say in his " Preface to the Reader " : 

Besyde the portion of lande perteynyng to the Spanyardes and beside 
that which perteineth to the Portugales, there yet remayneth an other 
portion of that mayne lande reachynge towarde the northeast, thought 
to be as large as the other, and not yet knowen but only by the sea 
coastes, neyther inhabyted h\ any Christian men. 

Then still more exactly indicating the very region which was des- 
tined long afterward to become Virginia and New England, he 
declares that it is a reproach to the English race that they who are 
the nearest people in Europe to that land have not attempted to 
christianize or occupy it, nor " to doo for owr partes as the Span- 
iardes have doone for theyrs, and not ever lyke sheepe to haunte one 
trade, and to doo nothynge woorthy memorie amonge men or 
thankes before god ". x 

Similarly through the growing familiarity of the Englishmen 
with the Indies during the reign of Elizabeth runs the thought that 
England also should have an Indian empire. The residence of 
English merchants and the experience of travellers in Spanish and 
Portuguese cities, their home correspondence, and their translations 
of Spanish works on the Indies ; 2 the productions of pamphleteers 
and writers of travels, culminating in the work of I lakluvt in 1589; 
the unwelcome visits of English adventurers to the Indies; the 
capture by Drake in 1587 and 1592 of the San Felipe and the Madre 
de Dios, the two great Portuguese carracks on their way home from 
the East Indies ; the minute description of the Portuguese East 
Indies by Linschoten in his work published in England in 1598; 
the wide experience and thoughtful observation of many Eng- 
lish statesmen and ambassadors — all these strengthened " im- 
perialist " sentiment in England. Men of visionary temperament, 
like Sidney, Raleigh, Drake, Captain John Smith, Sir Thomas 
Smythe, and many humbler names among London merchants or rest- 
less adventurers, felt their imaginations stirred by the thought of 
distant dominions of such extent, interest, and value to the Euro- 
pean powers that ruled them. It is not to be believed that in a 
period of strong national self-consciousness and increasing power, 
when ambition for distant possessions had been growing through 
more than one generation, a vigorous and effective effort to estab- 
lish some such colony as Virginia could have been long delayed. 

Projects indeed were early formed and colonists sent out, but 
their history is a record of failure. A desire for the possession 

1 Arher, p. 55. 

2 Under. nil, Spanish Literature in the England of the Tudors, chap. 5. 



Conditions surrounding Settlement of J 'irginia 5 1 1 

of a colonial empire and enthusiasm E01 the plantation of coloni 
are not enough; a practicable plan must be found. 

English exploitation of America was begun on mistaken and 
impracticable lines. A large proportion of the expeditions that 
w.re sent from England to America in the last two decades of the 
sixteenth century were sent out by single individuals or small 
groups of individuals. The first expedition which carried men 
intended as settlers, that of Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 157S, was a 
private venture of his own, with the aid of a few friends, and 
that on which he lost his life live years afterward was on scarcely 
a broader basis. The contemporary annalist. Camden, speaking 
of Gilbert's failure and death, says, " learning too late himsi 
and teaching others, that it is a difficulter thing to carry over 
Colonies into remote Countreys upon private mens Turses, than 
he and others in an erroneous Credulity had persuaded themselves, 
to their own Cost and Detriment".' Or as some one a few 
years later says, " Private purees are cowlde compfortes to adven- 
turers, and have ever ben fownde fatal! to all interprises hitherto 
undertaken by the English, by reason of delaies, jeloces and un- 
willingnes to backe that project which succeeded not at the first 
attempt." 2 The multiplicity and extent of costs involved in pro- 
curing and fitting out vessels, in providing military equipment and 
all other supplies for mariners and colonists, and in supporting em- 
and settlers; the long waiting for any returns; the slight 
development of instruments of credit — these made demands beyond 
the means of any individual gentleman or group of gentlemen, bur- 
dened as they already were by the living e- E their rank. The 

irts of the Gilberts, the Raleighs, and the Sidneys were along 
mistaken and hopeles Their e '-re more useful as a 

warning than as an example. There i-- no instance of a successful 
settlement in America carried out l>\ private persons till well to- 
ward the middle of the ;entury. Until the day when 
settlers for religious or economic rea ent out at their own 
cost, the only hope ■ incident to founding 
a colony was either to draw on the resources of the whole com- 
munity through the government, or to meet them by the com- 
bined means and the or credit and effort of the merchant 
class. At the close of the sixteenth century the English govern- 

nt was not in a position financially or politically to furnish the 
funds for colonizati* maining practical method was 

1 History of Queen Elizabeth, p. 287. 

= " Reasons or Motives for the Raising of a Publiquc Stocke," sect. 5. Printed 
in Brown, Genesis of the United Stales, I. 37. 



5 1 2 E. P. Cheyney 

the formation of a trading company, with its much more extended 
resources and its corporate life. The £40,000 which Raleigh spent 
on the six or eight expeditions he sent out nearly ruined him and 
his friends, while the East India Company spent more than £60,000 
on its first voyage to the East alone. 

The true line of descent of the plan for the successful settle- 
ment of Virginia is through the early trading companies of the Old 
World, not through the early failures in the New. In fact tin- 
whole advance of English discovery, commerce, and colonization 
in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was due not 
to individuals but to the efforts of corporate bodies. The develop- 
ment of such companies is a familiar story. It began almost an 
even half-century before the settlement of Jamestown. In 1553 
a group of London merchants sent out an expedition to the north- 
east to seek a new outlet for trade. As a result a line of con- 
nection was formed with Moscow in the centre of Russia, and in 
1555 a charter was given to the merchants engaged in the trade, 
forming them into the body that had a long and influential history 
under the familiar name of the Muscovy Company. " Muscov} 
House", their hall, was long the customary meeting-place for ad- 
venturers interested in new trading movements. Twenty-live years 
later the merchants who were engaged in the trade "'•' u ^"""iliiriri" 
C and -the lands to the east of the Baltic Sea secured a charter guar- 

anteeing to them the monopoly of English commerce there, and 
became known as the Baltic or Eastland Company. From a time 
earlv in the century other merchants had been interested in trade 
with Venice and the eastern Mediterranean possessions of Venice. 
Now thev proceeded to develop a trade with the possessions jf 
Turkey, in 1581 were chartered as the Levant or Turkey Company, 
and shortly afterward absorbed the smaller company trading to the 
northern Mediterranean. 

In the meantime a Barbary or Morocco Company had been 
formed. Then, as an Elizabethan chronicler says, " The search- 
ing and unsatisfied spirits of the English, to the great glorie of 
our nation, could not be contained within the banckes of the Medi- 
terranean or Levant seas, but thai 1 1 1 < ■ \ passed far towardes both 
the articke and anarticke Poles, enlarging their trade into the West 
and East Indies ".' English trade with the west coast of Africa 
was resented by the Portuguese, and in 1 561 Queen Elizabeth was 
induced to issue the following proclamation : 

Although we know no reasonable cause why our subjects may not 
saile into any country or province subject to our good brother, being in 
■John Speed, Chronicle, II. 852. 



S- 



Conditions surrounding Settlement of I 'irginia 



3 L J 



amytie with us. paying such tributes and droytes as may belong to 
their traffique, yet at the instant request of the said king, made to us by 
his ambassador, we be pleased for this tyme to admonish all manner 
our subjects to forbeare anie entry by navigation into any said ports 
of Ethiopia in which the said king hath presently dominion and tribute. 1 

.Many changes occurred in the next twenty-five years, and v. 
all the possessions of the Portuguese had come into the hands of 
the king of Spain and war had broken out between them and 
the queen, there was no longer any reason for such self-restraint, 
so that in 1588 the first Guinea or African Company was chartered. 
In 1589 a petition was laid before Lord Treasurer Burleigh asking 
for the queen's authorization to a group of adventurers to estab- 
1 trade in the Far East, on the ground that " the Portugales 
of long tyme have traded tli [ndies and the countries to them 

adjoyning to the great benefytte and enriching of themselves and 
their countrie . . . and the tyme doth now offer greater occazion 
for the attempting of trade in those countries than at any tyme 
fore yt hath done."- This project resulted in the Raymond 
and Lancaster expedition to India in 1591 and ultimately in the 
establishment in 1600 of the East India Company, the most am- 
bitious of all the chartered companies of th< 

In the same year with this petition, however, that is to say 1589, 
a memorial of even greater boldness, breadth of view, and interest 
was submitted to the queen. It is headed. " A Discourse of the 
Commoditie of the taking of the Straight of Magellan."'' It is based 
on the anticipated peril to all Europe arising from the possession of 
both the West and the East Indies by the king of Spain and his 
shutting other nations entirely 1 ait from both their products and 
their trade. It proposes that the narrowest part of the Strait of 
Magellan be occupied and fortified by the English, calmly suggesting 
that " Clarke the pyrott " may be sent there on promise of pardon, 
or rather, may "'go there as of him selfe and not with the counten- 
ance of the English state", and take some cannon and a man skilled 
in fortification. If later a few good English soldiers are placed 
there, no doubt " they will soon make subject to them all the golden 
mines of Peru and all the coste and tract of that firm of America." 
As additions to the soldiers and the native population may be sent 
" condemned Englishmen and women in whom there may be found 
hope of amendment ". Then the author contemplates, probablv for 
the first time, an independent America. " But admitt that we could 

1 Dyson. Proclamations. No. 34. 

- State Papers, East Indies, I., No. 8. 

'State Papers, Dom., Eliz., ccxxix, 97. 



514 E- P- Cheyney 

not enjoye the same longe, 1 nit that the Englishe there would aspire 
to government of themselves, yel were it better that it should be soe 
then that the Spaniardes should with the treasure of that countrie 
torment all the countries of Europe with warres." This and much 
more equally audacious and impracticable brought no response from 
the thrifty and cautious powers then in charge of the English govern- 
ment. And indeed such a project is to be looked upon rather as an 
indication of the expansive spirit of England than as a proposal any- 
where within the realm of success. 

Thus the century and the reign of Elizabeth closed without the 
possession by England of a foothold on the western continent. Yet 
the way was obvious. Six chartered commercial companies had 
divided most of the available < >ld World between them; next to be 
chartered was the Virginia Company. In fact the three next suc- 
ceeding companies, the Guiana, the Newfoundland, and the Bermuda 
1 mpanies, established in 160:), 1610, and 1612 respectively, all had 
their sphere of operation in America. The connection of the older 
companies with the Virginia Company was very close. More than 
one hundred members of the Virginia Company were already mem- 
bers of the East India Company. Sir Thomas Smythe was at the 
same time governor of both the Muscovy and the East India Com- 
panies, a member of the Levant Company, and treasurer of the 
Virginia Company. John Eldred, a director, and Sir William 
Romney, a governor of the East India Company, were members of 
the first council of Virginia. Richard Staper, who is described on 
his tombstone in St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, as "the cheefest actor in 
the discoverie of the trades of Turkey and East India ", was much 
interested in the Virginia project, but died in June, 1608, just too 
soon to have his name inscribed with the others on the second 
charter. The same connection existed in the case of Sir Edwin 
Sandys, Sir Thomas Roe, and man) others. There was also a distinct 
lapping over in time. The second charter of the Virginia Company 
was signed on the twenty-third and the second charter of the East 
India Company on the thirty-first of May, 1609. The vessels for 
the third voyage to India and those for the first voyage to Virginia 
were both loading at the wharves of London a! die same time: and 
the two ships of one of the expeditions of the Muscovy. Companv had 
returned to Gravesend hut three months before the first Virginian 
fleet left it. 

• lose however as was the connection of the Virginia Company 
with preceding trading companies, in many ways the closest analogy 
with its action and its nearest congener among the movements of the 
time is to be found in the plantation of Ireland then in progress. 



Conditions surrounding Settlement of Virginia 



j'.i 



An English colony had been i tablished in Ireland in the twelfth 
century, and additional settlers had come from England and Wales 
during the thirteenth and the earliest years of the fourteenth century, 
but after that time immigration had with small exceptions come to 
an end. 1 This " first colonization " had however been largelj ab- 
1 into the native population or had returned to England, and 
the end of the fifteenth century had seen the English occupation and 
domination in Ireland reduced to its lowest limits. Within the 
sixteenth and the early seventeenth century, however, a great reac- 
tion took place, first in the government, which became more vigorous 
and extended its power more widely in the island: then in the popu- 
lation, into which with great labor an English and Scottish element 
was injected. The colonization of Ireland with Britons may indeed 
be looked on as largely a part of the political policy of the govern- 
ment. The maintenance of an armed body in Ireland was an ex- 
pensive necessity; if this could he provided by the military services 
exacted from a body of English settlers, money would be saved and 
the end more effectively reached. Again, the evident failure to 
induce the native population or the old English element to abandon 
Catholicism made it highly desirable for political reasons to intro- 
duce a Protestant element from the outside. Since the only con- 
ci pti 'ii of orderly government which English statesmen of the time 
could form was the system already in existence in England, with its 
county and parish administration, its justices of the peace, grand and 
petty juries, and. town corporations; and since these could only be 
counted on to act in accordance with the desires of the administra- 
tion if they were made up of Englishmen and Protestants, this re- 
quirement made a still further need for settlers. Therefore the gov- 
ernment was more than ready to respond to the enterprise, the a 
turous spirit, and the ao ness of the times; and as a matter of 

fact an extensive colonization by English and Scots took place 
nearly if not quite contemporary with the earliest settlement of 
America. 

There was much that was alike in the tw i:e simul- 

taneity of dates is striking. It is true that in Ireland the process 
began sooner, but these first efforts were hardly more successful than 
the tentative sixteenth-century settlements in America. In i 
" plantation " was begun in I.eix and Offaly in the centre of Ireland 
in the lands of the O'Mores and O'Conors, far earlier than any 
definite project of English settlement in America was mooted, unless 
it were Stukely's plan for the settlement of Florida in 1563 and the 

'Bonn, Die Englische Kotonisalion in Irland, I. 83-89; English Historical 

. , October, 1906, p. 774. 
AM. HIST. REV., VOL. XII. — 34. 



5 16 /:. P. Cheyney 

gestions for colonization included in Gilbert's pamphlets of 1565. 
But this colonization in Ireland went forward very haltingly, and it 
was not till the very close of the century that the few English settlers 
had permanently taken the place of the natives. 1 There was also a 
series of attempts at settlements in the southwestern counties in 1569 
and in the northeast in 1567. 1570, and 1573. but the native Irish 
were too strong and the intruding elements too weak to gain success 
as settlers.- The most direct parallel to the efforts at American 
settlement by Gilbert and Raleigh between 1578 and 1588 is to be 
found in the plantation of Minister, which was begun in 1584. Ex- 
tensive grants were at that time made to Raleigh. Spenser, and other 
courtiers, and detailed conditions were published by which these 
and other broad lands confiscated from the natives were to be oc- 
cupied by English adventurers and their tenants. But there were 
many difficulties, the colonization proceeded slowly; in 1592 only 
two hundred and forty-five English families could be found actually 
settled there: in 1598 even these were temporarily swept away in the 
storm of Tyrone's rebellion, and in 1602 Raleigh disposed of his 
grant in disgust. Minister was provided with a certain number of 
new settlers, but they were almost lost among the surviving native 
population. 

The English colonization of Ireland that really succeeded, like 
the successful colonization of Virginia, occurred in the early years 
of the seventeenth century. In the fall of 1605 Sir Arthur Chi- 
chester. Lord Deputy, was formulating the first plans for an exten- 
sive settlement of the lately forfeited lands in Ulster ; and at the 
same time Gates, Somers. and others were drawing up the petition 
which led to the grant of the first charter of the Virginia Company ; 
Weymouth had just returned from New England: and the populace 
of London was laughing at the jests on the Virginia voyagers, on 
Captain Seagull and the Scotchmen in Eastward Hoe. The year 
1606 saw the first settlement of County Down and the continued 
occupation of Antrim by Scotchmen, 3 and the departure from Lon- 
don on December 30 of the first colonists of Virginia. In the years 
immediately following, while successive expeditions were taking out 
the small and unfortunate groups of early victims to the diseases, 
dissensions, and massacres of Virginia, steps were being taken for 
the plantation of Ulster on a large scale. In May, 161 1, the first 
settlers of Ulster proper began to arrive and take up their lands. 
Emigration now went on to both countries alike. Ulster having 

1 Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors, I. 385, etc. ; Bonn, Kolonisation, 280-287. 
: Bagwell, II., chaps, xxv.-xxxi. 

'George Hill, The Macdonnels of Antrim, 229, etc.; The Montgomery Manu- 
scripts, 54, etc. 



Conditions surrounding Settlement of Virginia 5 1 7 

been at least partially populated, new plantations were carried out in 
Wexford, Longford, Leitrim, and Westmeath, and several parts of 
the old Minister settlement were recolonized, while to Virginia were 
added Xew England, Maryland, the Bermuda Islands, and other 
American settlements. 

A bond between Virginia and Ireland is also to be found in the 
men who had a common interest in both. The Carews, Grenvilles, 
Courtenays, and Chichesters who planned a great colonizing expedi- 
tion from Somerset and Devon into Ireland in 156*9 were the same 
men who were interested in the earliest attempts to colonize America. 
Sir Humphrey Gilbert had been a captain in Ireland in 1566 before 
he presented to the queen his first address advocating colonization in 
America: he returned to Ireland in 1567 in an unsuccessful attempt, 
along with Sir Henry Sidney, to make a settlement on Lough Foyle ; 
some years later he went again to Ireland in connection with a 
similar scheme for a settlement in Munster, and remained in military 
service in that province as colonel in the final campaign of the Des- 
mond rising. All this occurred before he made his first voyage to 
America in 1578, and he was still again in Ireland between his 
return and his departure on his last and fatal voyage of 1583. 1 

Raleigh's career had begun in Ireland, and when he abandoned 
his rights in Virginia in 1589 it was to return with new interest to 
the effort for the development of his estates in Cork and Waterford. 
Two years afterward, when this like the rest of the Munster planta- 
tions failed, it was again to an American project, the exploration of 
Guiana, that he turned. Sir John Popham took a deep interest both 
in the plantation of Munster and in that of Virginia. Sir Francis 
Bacon was similarly interested in both countries, submitting plans 
for the settlement of Ireland, and as solicitor-general helping to draw 
up the charter of 1609 for Virginia. He was also a member of the 
roval council for Virginia. His valuation of the settlement of Ire- 
land was the higher of the two. In his Considerations touching the 
Plantation in Ireland, presented to King James on New Year's day, 
1609, he treats the colonization of Virginia as a somewhat visionary 
scheme, that of Ireland as a serious reality, the former being " an 
enterprise in my opinion differing as much from this as Amadis de 
Gaul differs from Caesar's Commentaries ". At the same time he 
goes on to recommend the establishment of two councils for the 
Irish plantation, one to sit in London, the other in Ireland, similar 
to the two councils for Virginia ; and long afterward he speaks of the 
plantations of Ireland and of Virginia as two of the greatest glories 
of King James's reign. - 

1 Dictionary of National Biography, article on Gilbert. 

s Spedding, Lord Bacon's Letters and Life, IV. 123; VII. 175. 



5 1 8 /:. P. Cheyney 

i Ither similarities existed. In the colonization of Ireland as of 
America, organized and chartered companies are not unknown. In 
!'ii i Jhe East India Company purchased certain lands near Dun- 
daniel on the southern coast of County Cork, where they erected 
iron-works, built dwellings for 300 workmen, cut down woods, estab- 
lished a ship-yard, and within the next two years spent £7,000 and 
built two vessels of 500 and 400 tons. 1 In 1609, after prolonged 
negotiation between the Privy Council and the officers of the city of 
London, an agreement was entered into by which the whole county 
of Derry in Ireland was handed over to the city, to be colonized 
under its control and to its profit. In order to carry out this work 
the " Honorable Society of the Governor and Assistants of London 
of the New Plantation in Ulster within the Realm of Ireland " was 
formed by die court of mayor and aldermen of the city, the Ward- 
robe in the Guildhall was set apart for its meeting-place, and a charter 
of incorporation granted it by the crown. May 29, 1613. 2 The society 
proceeded immediately to divide the land among the twelve city 
companies for sale and settlement, reserving to itself only the posses- 
sion of the cities of Londonderry and Coleraine, their contiguous 
lands, and the woods, ferries, and fisheries. 3 But this was scarcely 
a genuine trading company ; it existed, indeed still exists, only as an 
intermediary between the government and the settlers. The dis- 
tant commerce that lay at the basis of the other companies which 
carried out schemes of colonization had no place in the relations be- 
tween England and Ireland, and such companies could therefore 
hold here hardly any appreciable place. 

On the other hand, both in Ireland and in Virginia we hear much 
of groups or combinations of men or " consortships ", formed to 
carry out independent settlements. It was an associated group of 
twenty-seven volunteers from the southwestern counties of England, 
under the headship of Sir Peter Carew, who in 1569 petitioned the 
queen for a grant of the southwestern counties of Ireland. During 
the colonization of Munster in 1586, we hear of " nineteen men who 
desire in one consort with the writer. Henry Ughtred, to plant the 
counties of Connollo and Kerry " ; of the gentlemen of one associa- 
tion of Cheshire, Lancashire, Somerset, and Dorset ; and of another 
of Hampshire and Devon. J In connection with the plantation of 
Ulster " consorts of undertakers " are authorized, and the name of 

1 Cal. St. Pafers, Ireland, 1611-1614, pp. 170, 369, 381. 

2 A Concise View of the Origin . . . of the Governor and Assistants . . . 
commonly called the Irish Society (London, 1S22) : Report of Select Committee 
of the House of Commons on the Irish Society, May j, iSqi. 

8 Concise View, p. 38. 

1 Cal. St. Papers, Ireland, 1 586-1 588, pp. 51, 242, 243. 



Conditions surrounding Settlement of I 'irginia 519 

an individual, when it appears, is often used to represent such a 
group. 1 The corresponding process in Virginia is described as fol- 
lows in the Records of the Virginia Company: 

The Collony beinge thus weake and the Treasury utterly exhaust, 
Itt pleased divers Lords, Knights, gentlemen and Cittizens (greived to 
see this great Action fall to nothinge) to take the matter a new in hand 
and at their pryvate charges (joyninge themselvs into societies) to 
sett upp divers particularr Plantacions. 2 

From this time forward a prominent part in the work of settlement 
in Virginia was taken by " Captain Samuel Argall and his asso- 
ciates ", " Hamor and his associates "'. " Martin and his associates ", 
" the Society of Smythe's Hundred ", " the Society of Martin's Hun- 
dred ", " Captain John Pargrave and his associates ", " William 
Tracy and his associates ", " the company of John Smith of Nibley ", 
and a number of other groups of adventurers. 1 Tndeed. the agree- 
ment made with the Virginia Company under which the Pilgrims 
from Leyden sought the New World was a typical instance of these 
arrangements. In the fall of 1617 two representatives of this body 
came to London and entered into communication with the company. 
After long negotiations, the final grant under which the momentous 
1 f the Mayflov. er was made was that to " John Pierce and 
his associates, their heirs and assignes ", completed February 12, 
1 ' .jo. 4 

Some lesser analogies between the settlement of Ireland and of 
Virginia are noticeable. The statute quia emptores was suspended 
for the settlers in Ulster, and new manors and subtenancies could be 
created, as was true for Virginia and the other American colonies; 5 
there were much the same privileges of export and import for a 
certain period of years free of duty ;'"' the local division called a 
" precinct ", not apparently in use in England, but rather widely 
spread in the southern colonies of America, was used in a similar 
technical sense in the north of Ireland. There is the same complaint 
of the low character of many of the colonists. A Presbvterian min- 
ister who came to Ulster at the beginning of the settlement savs : 

From Scotland came many, and from England not a few ; yet all of 
them, generally the scum of both nations, who for debt, and breaking, 

1 Ibid.. 1611-1614, pp. 315, 317: Commission of July, 1609; George Hill, 
Summary Sketch of the Great Ulster Plantation, p. 18. etc. 

2 Records of the Virginia Company (1906), I. 350. 

* Ibid., 347, 404, 439, etc. ; Kingsbury, Introduction to Records, p. 95 ; Brown, 
First Republic in America, 245, 249, 256, etc. 

* Brown. 252. 262, 271, 341. 387, etc. 

5 Articles concerning English and Scotch Undertakers, sect. 11; Lord Bel- 
more, T-.i-o Ulster Manors, p. 66. 

6 Articles, etc.. secis. 14. 15 : Articles between the King and the City of Lon- 
don, sect. 15. 



520 E. P. Cheyney 

and fleeing from justice, or seeking shelter came hither, hoping to be 
without fear of man's justice in a land where there was nothing, or 
but little as yet, of the fear of God. 1 

So Sir Thomas Dale describes those whom he took over with him 
in 161 1 as " sutch disordered persons, so prophane, so riotous, so full 
of mutinie and treasonable intendments, as I am well to witness in 
a parcell of 300 which I brought with me, of which well may I say 
not many give testimonie beside their names that they are Christians, 
besides of sutch diseased and erased bodies ". 2 Fortunately for both 
settlements we have reason to know that they contained also far 
better elements. There is the same tendency in both colonizations to 
introduce that compulsion in order to secure colonists to which men 
so readily turned in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 5 

Eventually the colonization of Ireland and of the American colo- 
nies became rival movements. This opposition had been felt by some 
from an early period. In 1605 Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy 
of Ireland, wrote to the Earl of Salisbury of the absurd folly or 
wilful ignorance of those who run over the world in search of 
colonies in Virginia and Guiana whilst Ireland is lying waste and 
desolate. 4 Later, in speaking of the proposed colonization of the 
north of Ireland, he says, " My heart is so well affected unto it that 
I had rather labour with my hands in the plantation of Ulster than 
dance or play in that of Virginia." 5 At first the greater proximity 
of Ireland to Scotland and England was a point overwhelmingly in 
its favor ; and in the second and third decades of the century, while 
hundreds were going to America, Irish immigration might count 
thousands. But there came a time when this proximity was looked 
upon as a disadvantage, and those emigrants who wanted to leave 
England at all wished to get entirely away from the mother-country. 
Puritans and Churchmen successively emigrated, but emigrated by 
preference to New England or Virginia, where the hostility of the 
dominant party in England had less effect than it might have in Ire- 
land. Colonists for Ireland were never abundant. The plantations 
which were carried out just after that of Ulster, in the period from 
1615 to 1630, and which it was intended to establish on the mountain 
slopes of the southeast and in the forests and bogs along the Shan- 
non, had increasing difficulty in finding settlers. When Wentworth 

' Rev. Andrew Stewart, in Hill, Summary Sketch, p. 18. 

* Sir Thomas Dale to Lord Salisbury, August 17, 1611, in Brown, Genesis 
of the United States, I. 508. 

3 Brown, First Republic in America, 248, 296, 346, 375, etc. 

4 Cal. St. Papers, Ireland, 1603-1606, p. 326. 

5 Ibid., 1608-1610, p. 520. 

6 Bonn, Kolonisation in Irland, I. 353-357. 



Conditions surrounding Settlement of Virginia 521 

in the years immediately following 1630 formed plans for still 
another plantation, to be located in Ormond. Clare, and Connaught. 
it soon became evident that no English settlers were forthcoming, 
and Wentworth's political downfall only anticipated the certain fail- 
ure of his colonizing policy. 

In fact the settlement of Ireland as well as of America was neces- 
sarily limited by the amount of available population in England at 
the opening of the seventeenth century. A wide-spread opinion 
existed then that England was overpopulated, and this opinion is 
apparently still generally held. A tract printed in London in 1609, 
A Good Speed to Virginia, says: 

I hath prospered us with the blessings of the wombe, and with 
the blessings of the breasts, the sword devoureth not abroad, neither 
there any feare in our streetes at home; so that we are now for multi- 
tude as the thousands of Manasses and as the ten thousands 
Ephraim . . . we are a great people and the lande is too narrow 
us. 1 

When James offered to allow his Scottish a- 1 as his English sub- 
jects to take up lands in Ireland he explained that " There be no 
want of great numbers of the country people of England who with 
all gladness would transport themselves and their families to Ireland 
and plenish the whole bounds sufficiently with inhabitants.'*- The 
desirability of drawing off surplus population is frequently used as 
an argument for the plantation both of Ireland and of Virginia, and 
large numbers of emigrants are freely counted on. The Spanish 
ambassador Zuniga learns in March, 1606, that the new company is 
planning to send 500 or 600 men to Virginia at once, and a few 

nths later hears that the company will send 2,000 men ; soon 
afterward 3,000 are talked of, then 1.500 more, with a plan of an 
earlv increase of the numbers to 12.000.'' In the colonization of 
Minister in 1586, similarly, 4,200 persons were planned for during 
the first year, 21,800 during the first seven years.' 

Vet there is much to throw doubt on the correctness of this com- 
mon impression of the existence of a large surplus of population in 
England. Overpopulation is entirely a relative term and can mean 
nothing more than either an excessive number of persons out of 
employment or a disproportionately rapid increase of population. 
It is very doubtful whether the latter of these conditions, at least, 
existed. Xothing is more untrustworthy than contemporary 1 
mates of population. Dependent on the subjective attitude of the 

' Reprinted in Brown. Genesis of the United Slates, I. 297. 
: Hill. Summary Sketch of the Great Ulster Plantation. 
3 Brown, Genesis of the United States. I. 46, 100, 102, 147. 
*Cal. St. l J afers. Ireland. I}86-I}88. p. 243- 



522 /:. I'. ( heyney 

person giving the estimate and his dwelling-place and opportunities 
for making a judgment, such a large movement as the increase 
or decrease of national population is quite beyond the capacities of 
an ordinary observer. No general statistics exist, so we are driven 
to indirect means of judgment. It is evident that great difficulty 
was found in obtaining settlers for the new colonies in both Ireland 
and Virginia. The plantation in Minister just referred to, instead 
of the anticipated 4,200 in the first year, had reached in five years 
only the number of 536. In 1592, at the end of seven years, instead 
of the 1,500 families required as a minimum by the conditions of 
settlement, there were but 245. x Of all the southern and central 
plantations of Ireland we hear the same story ; the speculators who 
took the large tracts were forbidden to dispose of them to native 
Irish owners or tenants, but they were not successful, or at least 
were only partially and tardily successful in finding English or 
Scotch settlers, and thus largely failed to conform to the conditions 
of their grants. In Ulster, except in the shires nearest Scotland, the 
same was largely true. Every effort was made by the officials in 
formulating the terms of the contracts with the " undertakers " to 
secure British settlers and to exclude the Irish, but reports of 1619, 
1622, 1624, and 1632 show great numbers of Irish tenants and a cor- 
respondingly small number of English and Scotch immigrants — not 
one-third of the number called for by the requirements. 2 The king 
was deeply disappointed, and from December, 1612, wrote a series 
of letters to the authorities in Ireland complaining bitterly of the 
failure to introduce any large body of English settlers in Derry and 
the other Ulster counties. Finally in 1635 the Irish Company of 
London was prosecuted in Star Chamber for having failed to fulfil 
the terms of its charter, and was proved not to have sent over as 
many settlers as required, and to have allowed the natives to out- 
number the new-comers in many districts. It was thereupon con- 
demned to pay a fine of £70,000 and to lose its lands. 3 It was only 
into those counties which lay nearest to Scotland and which were in 
a specially favorable position in other respects that population flowed 
from the larger island in anything like an abundant stream; into all 
others it was a slender and slow-flowing current, till it practically 
ceased about 1630. 

The settlers sent to Virginia were for a long time but few. A 
careful computation gives the following figures of those who left 
England for Virginia: 1606-1609, 300; 1609-1618, 1,500; 1618- 

' Bonn, Kolonisation, I. 303-304. 

2 Ibid., 334-342. 

"Gardiner, History of England, VIII. 59, 60. 



Conditions surrounding Settlement of Virginia 523 

1621, 3,570; so that in the fifteen years in which Virginia was the 
only American colony there were altogether but few more than 5.000 
emigrants from England thither. Thi that were proposed 

to secure colonists, some of which indeed were adopted, suggest the 

le paucity in the supply. In [6ll Sir Thomas Dale, writing 
home to Lord Salisbury and appealing for a suppl) of 2,000 men, 
says thai he has "conceived that it it will please his Majestie to 
banish hither all offenders condemned betwixt this and then to die, 
out of 1 les, and likewise so continue that grant for 3 

yeres unto the Colonic, (and thus doth the Spaniard people his 
Indies,) it would be a readie way to furnish us with men." 1 The 

pany, as a matter of fact, followed this policy to a limited e.v 
through the whole period of its existence, but at this time convict 
igratii m played but a small part compared with the extent to which 
it was later carried. - Yet the company repeatedly asked thi 
of London for vagrant boys and girls of the city to be sent to the 
colony, and in 1621 had a bill introduced into Parliament which 
would have required each parish in England to send at its own 
expense a certain number of its paupers to Virginia. 3 

The most destructive fi >rces that were keeping down population in 
England at thi- time were three: warfare, death penalties indicted by 
the law. an. 1 pestilence. It is true that England was in 1607 at pea< 
and destined to remain so for the next seventeen years, but peai 
recent and had been preceded by a long warlike period. The genera- 
tion that could be counted on for purposes of emigration was that 
which had been growing up in tin- past, and this could not be re- 
placed immediately. It is true also, as frequent experience has 
shown, that national warfare does not necessarily deplete population. 
But the warfare of Elizabeths time was particularly destructive to 
life.-' The small body of English troops which according to the 
E 1585 England bound herself to keep up in the Netherlands 
- like a leak in one of the Dutch dikes, lladl 1, badly 

equipped, badly fed, the soldiers died in Holland and Zealand almost 
faster than they could be recruited in England.' Those who were 
in France in 1591 and th : - wire the victims of an 

onh tality; those in Ireland perhaps of a greater. 

The naval expeditions ven more fatal than land cam: 

The sailors and soldiers 011 board tin returning from the 

Genesis of • ' , I, 506. 

. II. 12-33. 
■ Company (19061, I. 270. 4.51, 4,-., etc. 

' Leycester Correspondence, Camden Society, 167, 285, 338. 374. 384, 389, 
etc.; Motley. United Netherlands, I., chap. VI. 



524 £. P. C heyney 

Armada fight " sickened one day and died the next " of ship-fever, 
until " many of the ships had hardly men enough to weigh their 
anchors." ( In the Portugal expedition of 1589 about 20,000 men 
embarked, less than 9,000 returned. Of 1,100 gentlemen volunteers 
on the expedition 700 died. 1 The subsequent expeditions of 1595, 
I 59^' l 597> I 599> ar >d l '"" were only somewhat less destructive to 
life, in [598 Elizabeth ceased to pay the English troops in the scr- 
vice of the Netherlands, but they still remained there in the servii > 
of the States and were constant!)' recruited in England. Indeed 
the peace between England and Spain signed in 1604 made no 
change in their position except that the king made a barren and 
ineffective promise that he would try to persuade the Englishmen 
in the Netherlands service to return and would discourage others 
from going there. 2 English troops were kept in the cautionary 
towns in Holland and Zealand by the government till 1616, and 
English recr'uits were as a matter of fact obtained by the Dutch gov- 
ernment. To these must be added those obtained for the arch- 
duke's service, in accordance with the permission given by the 
treaty. In 1610, the third year of the colonization of Virginia, 
there were 4,000 English troops in the Netherlands to be sent to 
the war in Cleves. 3 Thus notwithstanding the generally peaceful 
policy of James, there was still a steady drain of English population 
for military purposes going on, as well as the necessity for recupera- 
tion from the larger losses of Elizabeth's time. 

The losses by legal execution (although impossible, from the 
records now accessible, of statistical statement ) can be roughly 
estimated, or at least can be discovered to have been considerable. 
In the years from 1608 to 161 8, which cover the first decade of the 
settlement of Virginia, the court of jail-delivery of the county of 
Middlesex, which does not include the city and liberties of London, 
sent to execution 704 persons, an average of seventy a year. The 
number for that county for the whole of James's reign, so far as 
recorded, was 1,003, an average of about forty-five a year. 1 In the 
county of Devon in the year 1598, a chance year, at the Lent assizes 
seventeen persons were hanged, at the autumn assizes eighteen, at 
the four quarter-sessions thirty-nine, making altogether seventy-four 
persons executed in the year. In the year 1596, forty persons were 
executed in the county of Somerset. 5 To these are to be added 229 

'State Papers, Dom., Eliz., exxiii, No. 75; Cat. St. Papers, Dom., i$Si- 
r 59°, P- 534; Lodge, Illustrations of Britisli History, II. 355, etc. 

'Winwood, Memorials, II. 27. 

8 Gardiner, History of England, II. 100, 1S3 ; I. 219; Motley, United Nether- 
Ian is. IV. 228. 

4 Jeaffreson, Middlesex County Records, II. xvii-xx. 

'• Hamilton, Devonshire Quarter-Sessions, 30-31. 



Conditions surrounding Settlement o) Virginia 525 

Catholic recusants executed or allowed to die in prison under 1 
beth, and twenty-four under James:' and executions connected with 
special occurrences such as the rebellion of Essex and the Gun 
der Plot. When it is realized that, in each of the fifty-two shires of 
England and Wales, four times a year the justices of the peace and 
twice the justices of assize; and in each of the numerous chartered 
towns the corresponding judicial authorities were all busily apply- 
ing a severe criminal code, it will be recognized that a check to 
population was beinj closely analogous to war and pestilence. 

Yet there can he no doubt that the plag most de- ' 

structive of all causes of the depletion of population at that time. 
At intervals approximating ten years this enemy, ill-under 
unprepared for, weakly opposed, invaded England and raised the 
death-rate for one or more years to many times its usual hi 
In 1593, in 1603, in the period from 1606 to 1610. and in 1625, 
London suffered losses that can he measured with considerable 
exactness ; and during these and other years we have many glimpses 
of the ravages of tin other cities and in the rural 

parts of England. In the year [593 there were 17X14 deaths 
in London and its immediate suburbs, of which 10.662 were attrib- 
uted to the plague. Deaths from all other causes together were 
therefore hut 7.1S2. and this was a larger number than usual. Ac- 
cording to Stow. "There died in London and the liberties thereof, 
from the 23rd day of December 1602 to the 22nd day of Deo 
1603, of all diseases 38,244. whereof of the plague 30.57S.'*- The 
usual death-rate, according to these figures, was more than quad- 
rupled : and there is other testimony to indicate that this i^ rather 
within than beyond the facts, another estimate, including some out- 
lying districts, giving 42,945 deaths, whereof of the plague about 
33,347.' During the years from 1606 to 1610, the initial \ears of 
the settlement of Virginia, the plague was constantly active, th 
not nearly so destructive as in 1593 and 1603. The deaths speci- 
fically from the plague were as follows: 1606, 2.124: 1607, -.^2: 
1608, J,Ji>2; 1609, 4.240: and 1610, 1.803.' 

The last serious visitation of the plague in London in this period 
was in 1625, in which year there were 54,265 deaths, of which 
35.417 were attributed to the plague.' In the middle of the sum- 
mer the deaths from plague numbered more than 4,000 a week. In 
certain parishes where a maze of narrow streets, lanes, and alleys, 

1 Dodd-Tierney, History of the Church of England, III. 159-170; IV. 179-180. 

* Annates, p. 857. 

s Creighton. Epidemics in Britain, I. 478. 

* Ibid., 494. 

s London's Remembrancer. 



526 E. P. Cheyney 

lined with tenements, was filled with a crowded mass of the poorest 
of humanity, the deaths ran up to astonishing numbers; as in the 
i.i of St. Giles, Cripplegate, from which there were buried 3.988 
persons during the year, 2,338 of them having died of the plague. 
The population of London and its suburbs in 1607 was probably 
about 225,000, the mortality in ordinal - ) years being between 7,000 
and g.ooo, a proportion of about one-thirtieth, which was raised 
in more than one plague year to one-fifth or one-sixth. 1 

The ravages of the plague in London were probably greater in 
'degree than they were elsewhere, but not different in kind. Some- 
times in entirely separate years, sometimes just preceding or suc- 
ceeding the great London epidemics, we hear of the same deso- 
lating attacks on cities, towns, and villages scattered through all 
England. To estimate the effect of disease on population we must 
also add to the plague, technically so-called, other prevalent and fatal 
diseases, spotted fever, smallpox, dux, influenza, measles, and jail- 
fever or the " pining-sickness ", all of which were exercising their 
full powers of destruction at this time. 2 

In view of all these conditions it is small wonder that earl) 
colonization could not command a very large body of emigrants 
from England. Indeed such material as it had to work with was 
provided rather by the displacement and disturbance of population 
in England than by its actual growth in numbers. This dis- 
placement was one of the most marked characteristics of the time. 
Economic and political causes had so far altered the equilibrium 
of large elements in the population that they were easily removable. 
Religious causes were to have the same effect in later times, in- 
deed had already b) the date of the settlement of Virginia begun 
their work. It was to this mobility of population that not only the 
possibility of colonization but the rapid growth of London was 
due. In an occasional favorable year the baptisms, which w 
practically the same in number as the births, exceeded the number 
of deaths, as in 1580 when the baptisms were 3,568, the deaths 2,873 ; 
but any slight access of the plague or other dis< ase reversed the 
conditions, as in 1579 when there were ^,^jo baptisms and 
deaths; while a bad plague year made the deaths preponderate 
overwhelmingly over the births, as in 1578 when there were 3,150 
christenings and 7,830 deaths, or in 1625 when in the city and 
suburbs 6,983 persons were christened, but 54,265 died. 3 During 
a lung period the deaths in London must have much exceeded the 

1 Creigliton. Epidemics in Britain, I. 471-474. 
-' ll'iil., chaps, vi.-x. 
3 Ibid. 



Conditions surrounding Settlement of J irginia 527 

births, yet the population of the city during the same period was 
increasing. Obviously this was from the constant flow of outsiders 
into it : foreign immigrants, English adventurers, restless or evicted, 
occupationless, and often criminal vagabonds. It was this dispro- 
portionate and abnormal growth of London and perhaps of some 
ether large cities and towns, the " infinite increasing greatness of 
this city", that gave contemporaries the impression that England 
was teeming and suffering with a superabundance of population. 

Bacon in 1606 saw the conditions more fairly and expressed 
them in a speech in Parliament on the proposed union between 
England and Scotland : 

I must have leave to doubt, Mr. Speaker, that this realm of England 
is not yet peopled to the full. For certain it is. that the territories of 
France, Italy, Flanders, and some parts of Germany, do in equal space 
of ground bear and contain a far greater quantity of people, if they were 
mustered by the poll. Neither can I see that this kingdom is so much 
inferior unto those foreign parts in fruitfulness, as it is in population ; 
which makes me conceive we have not our full charge. Besides, I do 
see manifestly amongst us the badges and tokens rather of scarceness, 
than of press of people; as drowned grounds, commons, wastes, and the 
like; which is a plain demonstration, that howsoever there may he an 
overswelling throng and press of people here about London, which is 

I in our eye, yet the body of the kingdom is hut thin sown with 
people. 1 

The more closely conditions in England in the years just pre- 
ceding and contemporary with the foundation of Virginia are 
studied, the more natural docs it seem that such a settlement should 
have been made, that it should have taken some such form as it 
did and suffered the difficulties it actually experienced. The whole 
movement was a natural, almost an inevitable one. But this natural- 
ness does not diminish its significance. The grant of the charters to 
the Virginia Company, the settlement at Jamestown, the propaganda 
carried on in England in its interest, the activity of the company, 
the public discussion of the project, the attitude of the king toward 
it, make the whole movement one of the most important of its 
time. Tin- subject of colonization was now for the first time, and 
for all subsequent time, made one of popular interest. In the years 
between 1606 and 1620 many pamphlets were issued and numerous 
sermons preached on the subject ; appeals for support and state- 
ments of plans were made to the general government, to town 
authorities, to the London companies, to churches, and to indi- 
viduals ; the members of the company were numbered by hundreds, 
the number of investors large and small rose to thousands; general 
collections were taken up and lotteries were carried on for its cx- 

1 Speckling, Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, III. 312. 



528 E. P. Cheyney 

penses ; it was the subject of discussion in the Privy Council, in 
Parliament, in the court of aldermen of London, and in the councils 
of various trading bodies. There must have been few persons in 
England who took any interest whatever in public questions who 
failed to become somewhat familiar with the subject of colonization ; 
and all later similar movements were carried on in the light of 
this familiarity. 

The influence of the Virginia project on the political movement 
of the day was by no means insignificant. It worked itself into 
the rising conflict between King and Parliament, giving occa- 
sion for defining the differences of political views between the 
royal and the popular party ; and the Virginia Company, while 
falling a victim to the hostility of the former, strengthened and 
gave unity to the latter. 

Lastly, it influenced the literature of the time; not only the litera- 
ture of voyages and travels, of practical proposals and patriotic 
or religious appeals, but the higher forms of imaginative writing. 
Bacon's essay " On Plantations " under its classic terms and general 
1 ihservations scarcely conceals his specific views and criticisms of 
the Virginia project as it was being carried on. In Drayton's " Ode 
to the Virginian Voyage " the familiar expressions of the devotees 
of colonization are put into the service of no mean poetry : 

And the ambitious vine 
Crownes with his purple masse 

The cedar reaching hie 

To kisse the skie, 
The cypresse, pine, 
And usefull sassafras. 



Thy voyages attend. 
Industrious Hackluit, 

Whose reading shall inflame 

Men to seeke fame, 
And much commend 
To after-times thy wit. 

Three excellent poets joined to immortalize the Virginian cap- 
tain and the reckless adventurer in Eastward Hoe ; and the changes 
are rung on " the Virginian continent ", " Virginian priests ", 
" Virginian princes", and "the noblest Virginians" in Chapman's 
mask played before the king by the gentlemen of the Inns of Court 
in 1613. The sights and sounds of the sea, the shipwreck, the boast- 
ing and roystering, the grace, the charm, and the high imagination 
of the Tempest, and much more that belongs to the literature of 
that time and of all time, are not without a close connection with 
the earliest voyages to Jamestown. Edward P. Cheyney. 



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ST. AUGUSTINE 
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